A 420-meter white steel tube running alongside a railway line in the northern Netherlands could be the start of a new kind of transportation for people and goods. The tube from Hyperloop Center is the heart of the new transport technology that opened recently in Veendam. Developers from Hyperloop Center will be testing the changing technology there over the coming years.

Hyperloop technology was once supported by business leader Elon Musk. Its supporters say it is far faster than short flights, high-speed rail, and trucks. When Musk first presented the idea, he said it could transport people the nearly 645 kilometers between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 30 minutes. But since then, progress has been slow to get from an idea to the real world.

Sascha Lamme is the center’s director. He expects to have the first Hyperloop route by 2030. He said, “There are already preparations being done for such routes in for example Italy or India.”

Robert Noland is a professor at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He told The Associated Press that policy makers go after big ideas of the future but they should invest in simpler transportation structures. He added, “It costs too much to build.” But Lamme noted that they have not added all of the ways they can reduce costs over the next ten years.

The test center’s tube is made up of 34 separate sections mostly 2 and a half meters wide. A piece of equipment next to the tube removes air in the tube to reduce the pressure inside the tube. That reduces air resistance and permits capsules to travel at such high speeds. A capsule built by Dutch hyperloop company Hardt Hyperloop will be tested next month. It receives financial support from private investments, local and national governments, and the European Commission.

While testing continues in Veendam, hyperloop developers hope that routes for their technology will be coming. Lamme stated that getting government authorization (授权) for building routes is their main hardship they encountered. And he said finding new financial support to test and show the technology is what is needed to make this happen.

Bad drivers in the District could soon get a serious warning sent straight to their cell phones. The city is working to identify drivers with a history of traffic violations, such as speeding and driving through a red light, to send messages warning them of their history of infraction(违规) as well as their risks of getting into a fatal crash.

City officials say they hope the pointed messages(定制信息) will decrease dangerous road behaviors. “We know that there is a number of drivers that are putting others at serious risk with excessive speeding and red-light running,” said Jeff Marootian, director of the city's Department of Transportation, one of the agencies leading the effort. “We're hoping that this creative approach can ultimately reduce serious injury and fatality crashes.”

“This is a creative approach that we haven't tried before, and we think that it is worth the effort,” Marootian said. The concept, which D.C. officials say is a first among cities nationwide, is the latest effort to target dangerous drivers in a city where serious and fatal crashes are on the rise. City leaders said evidence shows drivers with multiple traffic violations are more likely to be involved in crashes.

Researchers have studied the relationship between repeat traffic offenders and serious collisions, with some data suggesting a strong connection between the two. But some researchers also have pointed to other factors at play, such as the amount of time the driver spends on the road and exposure to traffic enforcement（强制性）systems.

A team from The Lab led by Muriel E. Bowser, is examining data from the District's automated traffic enforcement program to predict a driver's likelihood of being involved in a serious crash. It will create a campaign that could include text messages and mail sent to a sample of high-risk drivers. “We will evaluate whether drivers who receive these messages have fewer red-light violations, speeding violations, and ultimately, crashes, compared to the group of high-risk drivers who do not receive the messages,” according to The Lab.

The program is among the latest road-safety measures with the purpose of cutting the growing number of traffic injuries and fatalities. Although the new messages appear as a warning to higher-risk drivers, city officials said the intention is to educate the recipient, Marootian said there is no violation or fine attached to the message and that the campaign is to use data to directly communicate with individual drivers. Some questioned whether the message will work.

Last Thursday, the world’s first self-driving, electric container (集装箱) ship made its first trip to Oslo, Norway. The ship’s owners aim to cut pollution by moving large amounts of products by water on the southern coast of Norway instead of by truck.

The ship, called Yara Birkeland, is owned by Yara, a company that makes fertilizer (化肥). The company wanted to develop a zero-pollution ship that was completely autonomous (self-driving). Yara worked with a ship-building company called Vard and the technology company Kongsberg to develop the ship. The company says that in the future everything will be done completely by machine.

The Yara Birkeland is a container ship, able to carry 120 large containers like those pulled by trucks. But the ship is fully electric and is powered by clean batteries (电池). The company says the ship has roughly as many batteries as 100 electric cars. The electricity that will be used to recharge the batteries is produced by water power, so there’s no pollution at all.

On November 18, the boat traveled from Horten to Oslo, making its first trip ever. But the Yara Birkeland won’t usually be going to Oslo, and it won’t be traveling far, either. It will travel a regular route from Yara’s factory in Porsgrunn up to the port in Brevik, covering a distance of about 8.7 miles. Yara normally uses trucks to move fertilizer between these locations.

Now, with the Yara Birkeland moving huge amounts of fertilizer by water, the company expects to cut out 40,000 yearly trips by oil-powered trucks. That will prevent about 2,204,620 pounds of carbon from being let out every year.

In the future, as an autonomous ship, the Yara Birkeland is expected to operate without any human control. Yara plans to spend the next two years training and testing the ship. But, as with many autonomous cars, the ship will continue to have humans watching out even once the ship is driving by itself.